[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 2 (Thursday, January 24, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H70-H76]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, after my good friend, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Paul) had his presentation today on his perspectives on
the United States foreign policy, I thought that it would be fitting
that I present a similar point of view but not exactly in agreement
with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). Although we are both people
who love liberty and justice and value our freedom that we have here in
the United States and in various countries throughout the world, we
have a different view on exactly what policies the United States should
follow to ensure that there is the maximum of peace and liberty and
justice in this world.
Today I would like to talk a little bit about where we are at in the
world and why we are there and some thoughts, some basic thoughts about
American foreign policy.
First and foremost on this subject, we must recognize that our
military forces are at this moment in action in various parts of the
world, especially in Afghanistan, and they are there and they are
fighting and sometimes they are taking casualties in order to avenge
the slaughter of nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans on September 11
past. This forceful and deadly response in the form of American
military forces being unleashed against persons in different parts of
the world is totally justified. It will and, in fact, already has
deterred other terrorist attacks upon us.
It is, yes, part of an act of vengeance, and I see nothing wrong with
the United States Government avenging the death of 3,000 Americans who
were killed, 3,000 innocent Americans, people who were not combatants
who were slaughtered by evil forces overseas. And in this vengeance we
will, as I say, deter other evil forces in this world from targeting
Americans and from committing other heinous acts that have caused us so
much grief here with the loss of friends and family.
All Americans should be grateful for the magnificent job that has
been done by our military personnel, and let us remember as we are
watching this great victory that we have just had in Afghanistan that
there were naysayers who were warning us not to do anything militarily
in Afghanistan, that it would become a quagmire and that any time we
commit military forces anywhere that it is so risky that we should just
forget it.
There is a saying of a captain of a ship, if a captain of a ship
believes that his number one job is preserving the ship, well, then he
will never leave port.
Well, the ship of the United States has one important purpose, they
have many purposes, our ship of state, but the most important purpose
of our Federal Government is to protect the people of the United States
and to protect our freedom. It is not simply to watch events go by. It
is not simply to have a military for which we pay for our military,
only to see it there and to caress it and to salute it and to say good
things about it. No, our military is there and the people who are in
our military understand they have a job to do. At times that means that
they must leave port and they must go to foreign destinations in order
to protect the national security interests of our country and in order
to prevent our people from suffering the kind of attacks that we
suffered on September 11.
When we do not do that and when dictators and tyrants and evil-doers
around the world see the United States has no more stomach for that
type of conflict in distant places, then we will indeed become the
target because there are evil people around the world who
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hate everything that the United States stands for and envy the
prosperity and freedom of our people.
The naysayers, if we remember, said the same thing about Saddam
Hussein's attack and invasion and subjugation of Kuwait. The naysayers
said we better not get into that war because Saddam Hussein kept
playing on their psyche, the Vietnam psyche. This is going to be the
mother of all wars.
Well, what happened in Kuwait and in Iraq 10 years ago and what just
happened in Afghanistan in these recent months should indicate to us
when America is on the right side and we are doing what is right and
opposing aggression and supporting those people who believe in freedom
and democracy, that we will, we will win, and that we will be on the
side of those people in those areas on which we are fighting, and that
it will not become a quagmire because we are doing what is right and
just.
For the record, not aggressively responding to the invasion, Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait or not aggressively responding to the atrocities
committed against us on September 11 would have been a much riskier
strategy than unleashing a military counterattack, which is what we
did. But Americans need to understand that these two conflicts, while
our military have went in in these conflicts and altered the course of
history and defeated the tyrants, defeated the terrorists, the American
people need to know that that military action might not have been
necessary had we in place policies which would have prevented the
attacks in the first place.
It was bad policy on the part of the United States that led Saddam
Hussein to attack Kuwait. It was bad policy on the part of the United
States that led bin Laden and the Taliban to conclude that they could
conduct murderous attacks on the people of the United States and that
they would not suffer the consequences.
The fact is in terms of Iraq, during the fast moving and somewhat
confusing days at the close of the Cold War, a high ranking foreign
policy official from George Bush's administration, meaning George Bush,
Senior, the first President Bush, an Ambassador April Gillespie,
misinformed Saddam Hussein as to our country's position on Iraq's claim
to Kuwait. She stated that we considered Iraq's claim on Kuwait and the
threats of Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to be an internal matter of
Iraq.
{time} 1445
She stated it very clearly and it has been printed since, an internal
matter. That is what Saddam Hussein contemplated when he tried to
decide whether to unleash his military forces against Kuwait. It was a
miscalculation on his part, but due to a bad policy statement by our
own government, a mistake by our own government, a mistake by the
previous Bush administration.
Well, that classic misstatement on Ambassador April Gillespie's part
led to the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War that followed. That was
a policy error, and I might add, when some people suggest when I
criticized the last administration for its mistakes and misdeeds that
they are claiming that I am being partisan, let me just note that I am
fully recognizing that mistakes often have happened in Republican
administrations, and I just gave an example of that.
What we must do in order to fully understand what happened on
September 11 is to take a look at the government policies and the
events that led up to September 11. I worked in the White House during
the Ronald Reagan years, during those years when Reagan put an end to
the Cold War, and ended those Reagan years with the dismantling of the
Communist dictatorship that controlled Russia and the puppet states.
Part of that effort on the part of Ronald Reagan, of course, to bring
the Soviet Union down or at least end the Cold War was President
Reagan's strategy that the United States should support people
throughout the world who are struggling to free themselves from
Communist tyranny, especially those people who are struggling to free
themselves from Soviet occupation.
The bravest and most fierce of these anti-Soviet insurgents were in
Afghanistan, and the American people can be proud that we provided the
Afghan people with the weapons they needed to win their own freedom and
independence. That Cold War battle was a major factor in breaking the
will of the Communist bosses in Moscow and thus ending the Cold War. By
ending the Cold War, we made everyone on this planet, especially those
people who live in the Western democracies, we made them safer, we made
them more prosperous.
In our own country, it resulted in 10 years where spending on the
military was able to decrease in the range of hundreds of billions of
dollars, which then went into our economy in different ways, and all of
this can be traced back to Ronald Reagan's strategies and traced back
to the people of Afghanistan who fought for their freedom and
independence and under the Soviet bosses and the crack in the Soviet
leadership led to its downfall.
However, we must take a look here at this strategy and at this moment
in history at the end of the Cold War to fully understand the crime of
September 11. One of the common errors found in trying to understand
September 11 is the suggestion that those holding power in Afghanistan
today are the same people that we supported who were fighting against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. This by and large is
wrong. It is inaccurate.
Yes, some of those who are currently or were in power during the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan, some of those in the Taliban regime did
fight the Russians, there is no doubt about it, but by and large those
people who were in the leadership of the Taliban were not in the
leadership of those people who fought with the Mujahedin that fought
against the Russians, the Soviet Union. In fact, I do not know of one
of the major factional leaders of the Mujahedin who fought the Russians
when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan; not one of those became a major
leader in the Taliban. So those who fought Soviet occupation, the
Mujahedin, were different from those people who later took over as the
Taliban.
During my time at the White House from 1981 to 1988, I had a chance
to meet the leaders of the Mujahedin, and I found them to be a very
interesting and many of them honorable men. Some of them were wild and
woolly and others were quite a sight because I would take them
sometimes to the dining room at the White House and would see these
guys with their turbans and outfits there at the executive dining room
at the White House.
I got to know them personally, and I got to admire them as
individuals. Many of them were so courageous and they worked with me,
and quite often I would be called when they needed help in procuring
certain weapons systems, or time periods when even medical supplies
were unable to get through they would call me to try to use my contacts
at the National Security Council and the White House to break down the
barriers, and I was able to do that successfully on some occasions.
I always told them that if I was going to help them I was going to
personally be involved with their struggle against the Soviet army,
that if, when I left the White House, if the war was still going on
that I would join them at least for one battle, sort of put my body
where my mouth is or my money where my mouth is, whatever we want to
say it is, but I was willing to stand up with them rather than just
give them moral support.
So after I left the White House and I was elected to Congress, I had
2 months between my election in November of 1988 and January of 1989
when I would be sworn in that were my last 2 months of freedom before I
actually became a Member of Congress. During that time I disappeared
and hiked into Afghanistan as part of a small Mujahedin unit and
engaged with that unit in the battle against Soviet troops around the
City of Jalalabad, and I marched in for several days through the Khyber
Pass and around a side trail.
These people that I marched with, some of them were young, some of
them were old. They were armed just with RPGs, rocket propelled
grenades, and Kalashnikov rifles. These were very brave people, but let
me suggest that they were not senseless killers and they were not
people who would not have rather been with their families, but during
the war in Afghanistan the Soviet Union had destroyed their ability to
live at peace with their families. They destroyed their villages,
[[Page H72]]
their water systems, et cetera, and more than that, they tried to
destroy their ability to worship God as they saw fit.
As we were marching through the devastation of Afghanistan, as I have
a sip of water right here, at times there was not even water for hours
at a time and perhaps one full day of hiking, and these people did not
have enough money to have canteens. They did not have enough money to
have sunglasses. So they would put pencil lead into their eyelids and
swirl it around so that a coating of pencil lead would serve as a
shield against the sun as we marched across the desert. These people,
as I say, had almost no food, very little water.
We gave them the arms they needed to fight for their independence,
but every day they would pray five times, thanking God for what they
did have. I got back right before Thanksgiving, and I had Thanksgiving
dinner with my family that year, and we had so much, so much in
abundance in the United States. Sometimes we forget how wonderful it is
a place that we have. Sometimes we forget that we have so much to be
grateful for, and in America, believe me, every day should be
Thanksgiving Day. Every day should be a day when we thank God. These
brave people did it five times a day when they had nothing, and it was
their strength and courage, as I say, that helped bring the Soviet
military to its knees and eventually forced them to retreat from
Afghanistan.
After the Russians retreated from Afghanistan, the United States
simply left. We had been providing them with a billion dollars a year
to finance that war and then we simply walked away. We left the Afghans
to their own fate after all of this destruction and death, after so
many of them had become maimed, their children were maimed. They had no
way to take care of their own families. We left them to sleep in the
rubble. We did not even help them clear the land mines that we had
given them during the fight against the Soviet army.
This was a sin that we committed against the people of Afghanistan,
and it came back to haunt us. We left them, as I say, to sleep in the
rubble, and we left them with no leadership. The leadership we
supposedly left them with was that of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and
these two countries, I might add, played a shameful role in Afghanistan
in the years since the end of the Afghan war with the Soviet Union, and
these two countries, supposedly our friends, the Pakistanis and the
Saudis, they bear a great deal of the responsibilities, a great burden
of the responsibilities for the fact that we suffered the attack on
September 11.
So perhaps when we left Afghanistan, and then again this was not this
administration or even President Clinton's administration, again it was
at the Cold War, the end of the Cold War during President Bush,
Senior's administration, perhaps that is one of the policies that we
put in place that led to September 11.
After the collapse of the Communist regime in Afghanistan, the
Mujahedin factions who had fought the Russians with no direction or no
leadership from the United States began to bicker and to fight among
themselves. This was one of my first years in Congress when this was
going on, and I remember that even then I could see that it was
important for us to try to support a positive alternative for
Afghanistan. Why is it that the United States Government could not step
forward with saying look, here is a positive alternative, let us push a
plan of our own that, if it works, people will be able to live in
peace, and if it works, the country can rebuild, but we had no plan of
our own and in fact we left it to the Pakistanis and the Saudis.
I myself took it upon myself because I was involved in Afghanistan to
go into the region and to go into Afghanistan and to argue aggressively
that there was a strategy that would bring peace to Afghanistan and
that was bringing back the old king of Afghanistan who had been
overthrown in 1973, King Zahir Shah. Zahir Shah had been a coup. He had
been removed from power in 1973, and that is what began the cycle which
caused the horrible bloodshed.
All of the Afghan people had a warm place in their hearts for King
Zahir Shah. King Zahir Shah was a man who, because he had such a good
heart, some evil people felt that he was vulnerable and removed him in
a military coup when he was visiting another country at one point, but
Zahir Shah was so beloved by his people. I went to see Zahir Shah when
he was in exile in Rome and he committed to me that if he would return
to Afghanistan that he would lead a temporary government only that
would stay in power long enough to institute democratic elections and
permit the country's governmental infrastructure to be put in place,
that would give the people of Afghanistan a chance, a chance to have a
decent government and to have free elections and to bring in outside
people to help them set up the democratic process and to observe the
elections and permit the people throughout the country to form
political parties. Zahir Shah had agreed to that because he wanted to
go back to Afghanistan to prove to his people that during that time of
their travail, when he had been forcibly removed from office, that he
was with them and that he cared about them and that he wanted to make
this last contribution because he was becoming an older man.
That was 10 years ago when I went to almost every area around
Afghanistan, to almost every country around Afghanistan, as well as
going into Afghanistan itself, to advocate that Zahir Shah be returned
to Afghanistan, and guess what? Everywhere I went I was followed by a
representative of the United States State Department, and right after I
would speak to the various leaders, the State Department official would
announce that Dana Rohrabacher is speaking for himself. It is not the
position of the United States Government. In other words, they were
saying do not listen to Dana Rohrabacher because he is just a bunch of
hot air, he represents nobody. What was the State Department's
alternative? They had no alternative.
{time} 1500
I do not mind people disagreeing with me. I do not mind people
undercutting me. But the State Department was tearing my efforts down
to bring back Zahir Shah to try to establish democratic government and
they had no alternative. Their alternative was to let the turmoil
continue in Afghanistan. Their alternative was to ignore what was going
on in Afghanistan. That was our State Department's position. And that
position continued into the Clinton administration, time and again
undercutting Zahir Shah.
And what was their position on Zahir Shah? He is too old. Zahir Shah
was too old. At that time, of course, he was younger than Ronald Reagan
was when he ended the Cold War. Now, 10 years later, he is still alive
and he is not too old now. No, there was something else at play.
Whatever was at play, whatever convinced our State Department to
undercut the efforts to have a democratic alternative during the early
days after the Soviet troops left, they will have to explain someday.
But as it was, this Member of Congress took enormous efforts, I took
enormous efforts to try to have an alternative and offer that
alternative to the people of Afghanistan. Because I knew that if our
country did not do what was right, it would come back and hurt us
someday.
And so I went forward over the years, and the confusion and the chaos
continued in Afghanistan. And then, like a flash upon the sea, just a
surprise move that was happening, being played by somebody, but all of
a sudden there was another force at play in Afghanistan. And that was a
force that was called the Taliban. In the mid-1990s, a fresh, well-
equipped, well-armed, well-rested, well-trained military unit entered
Afghanistan from Pakistan. These people by and large had not been
fighting the Soviet Union but were, instead, kept out of the war and in
schools in Pakistan. And at these schools, by the way, many of them
were and continue to be illiterate.
The United States provided a great deal of money and resources for
the Mujahadin during their war with the Soviet Army. That money went
through the Pakistani, the equivalent of the Pakistani CIA. It is
called the ISI. And apparently the Pakistani ISI had siphoned enough of
our money off to keep that third force and to create that third force
which would be used after the war to do their bidding. The
[[Page H73]]
Taliban was the creation of Pakistan and the creation of the Saudis,
and they were set up to be the attack dogs of these people in power in
those countries so that they could dominate Afghanistan.
When the war with the Soviet Union was over, and after the bickering
among the factions themselves, which of course had been instigated a
great deal by Pakistan, who continued to support evil people like
Hekmahtri Gulhbahdeen, but when all the democratic forces, or people
who wanted a decent government in Afghanistan, were blood white, the
Taliban were just thrust upon the scene.
And, as I say the, Saudis were also involved. The Saudis bankrolled
this effort. During the war with the Soviet Union, the Saudis had
provided several hundred million dollars a year. The United States
provided at times up to a billion dollars a year for the anti-Soviet
insurgence in Afghanistan.
I once asked General Turki, who is the head of Saudi intelligence,
why they should not bring back the King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, in
order to end this bloody cycle; and that he could be someone who
everyone could rally behind because they all trusted him not to kill
them. Zahir Shah, while he was no one's first choice, everyone knew
that Zahir Shah was incapable of committing atrocities against them,
and they trusted him not to be someone who would hurt them. So at least
he offered everyone safe haven. Well, General Turki, the Saudi general
who was in charge of their intelligence, told me that the Saudis wanted
nothing to do with King Zahir Shah and they had their own plan for this
third force with Pakistan: the Taliban.
And when the Taliban arrived on the scene, let us admit that there
had been so much chaos and confusion in Afghanistan, many people
thought that they might become a force for stability; and they were
welcomed in many parts of Afghanistan, mainly because the Taliban
carried huge pictures of King Zahir Shah, claiming that they were going
to bring back Zahir Shah. When I heard about those pictures, I said,
well, maybe they will. Maybe they will create stability and bring him
back. Maybe my conversations had some effect.
Well, it did not take long before the people of Afghanistan realized
what the Taliban were all about. Luckily, they were not able to occupy
the northern provinces of Afghanistan because the commanders there were
very hesitant to let troops into their part of the country who they did
not know anything about. So we soon learned that instead of a force for
stability, the Taliban, which had been created by our Pakistani and
Saudi friends, was a monster, a monster that threatened stability of
the world, a monster that was eating up any chance for peace and any
chance for a decent government and a decent standard of living in
Afghanistan.
The Taliban were medieval in their world and religious views, they
were violent and intolerant, they were fanatics; and, as such, they
were an aberration of Islam. They were totally out of sync with Muslims
throughout the world and even totally out of sync with the Muslims in
Afghanistan.
Let us note the reason the Taliban were defeated so quickly was that
the people of Afghanistan did not like the Taliban, which is exactly
the opposite of what we were being told by the State Department and
others all along. The Taliban are best known, of course, for their
horrific treatment of women, but they were also the violators of human
rights across the board. They jailed and threatened to execute
Christian aid workers, allegedly for doing nothing more than espousing
the belief in Jesus Christ. They ended personal freedoms, they ended
freed of speech and freedom of the press. These things were not even a
consideration. They ruled by fear.
This is the Taliban that was put in place by Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia, and it was clear that that was what was going on after a very
short period of time. The Taliban believed they had a private line to
God. The rest of us, who have different religious convictions,
according to the Taliban, are not only wrong but we are evil, of
course. And perhaps that is why they gave safe haven to the likes of
bin Laden, a Saudi terrorist who has been in Afghanistan and was in
Afghanistan for years training terrorists and planning his attacks on
the United States and other countries.
Oh yes, by the way, bin Laden let us not forget this as well, had
several thousand gunmen with him. We know that. We do not know where
they have all gone, but during the time when the Taliban were in power
in Afghanistan, bin Laden's armed militias or legions were marauding
around Afghanistan murdering any Afghan that would try to resist
Taliban power. So the Taliban and bin Laden were despised in
Afghanistan, even though we were told by the State Department and
others how horrific it would be for us to try to dislodge the Taliban
from power.
Remember, during the years of the Taliban, they had the support from
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; and in fact during those years, during the
1990s, the Taliban captured all but a very, very small portion of
Afghanistan. They beat back all of those people who were against them
in the northern part of the country so only a sliver, only 10 percent,
of the country in and around the Panjer Valley remained free of Taliban
control.
The only reason they did not really take over the entire country is
there was one leader in the northern part of Afghanistan who captured
the imagination of his people and the people of Afghanistan and other
people throughout the world. His name was Commander Masood. Commander
Masood led his forces in the Shamali Plains and up in the Panjer
Valley, and he was never conquered by Soviet troops nor was he ever
conquered by the Taliban.
I went to see Commander Masood in the mid 1990s, and through the
years before and after that I maintained a relationship with him. I
have spoken to his brother on many occasions and kept a line of
communication going. Commander Masood was a very decent and honorable
man and, as I say, a much beloved person. But the Taliban domination of
Afghanistan was not bad enough for the United States to support
Commander Masood or anybody else who was fighting against the Taliban.
For years during the Clinton administration I begged and I pleaded to
provide some kind of help to the Northern Alliance, which were then
resisting the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban did not need
to have taken over all of Afghanistan, except for that little 10
percent. The Taliban could have been stopped when it was holding
perhaps 70 percent of the country or 60 percent of the country. But at
no time was President Clinton and his administration willing to have
anything to do with trying to resist the Taliban forces.
And every time I suggest that the Clinton administration policies of
the last 5 years led to this atrocity committed against us on September
11, people go bananas. They automatically say that I am being partisan.
Let me note that in this speech already I have highlighted several of
the major mistakes made during Republican administrations. But let us
not be so hesitant to place responsibility where it belongs when it
comes to September 11. Today, I have no doubt that if the policies
during the Clinton administration would have been different, the
murderous attack on our people on September 11 would not have happened
and we may well have spared the people of the world this horrendous,
horrendous war that we are going through right now.
Of course, this war could be a lot worse than it is. The fact is our
military is doing a terrific job. But this is not partisan. I am a
senior member of the Committee on International Relations. And over the
years, as I watched what was going on in Afghanistan, I realized that
during the Clinton administration there was a pattern, a consistent
pattern going on that appeared that the United States policy was not
actually opposing the Taliban but, instead, we actually had a covert
policy of supporting the Taliban.
Let me repeat that, in case anyone misses the significance of it.
During the 1990s, when we had a chance to support those people who were
opposing the Taliban, when we had a chance to undermine the Taliban's
strength so that they could be replaced by others who were more closely
aligned to democratic principles or even to bring Zahir Shah back and
establish a democratic government, our government had exactly the
opposite policies.
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Every time the opportunity arose to overthrow the Taliban or to
undermine the Taliban, the Clinton administration actually did things
that helped bolster the strength of the Taliban.
When I noticed this trend as a member of the Committee on
International Relations, I called on the Clinton administration and the
State Department to provide me the documents so that I could peruse the
official State Department documents, the cables coming in from
overseas, the briefing papers, to determine what our policy was.
Now, I am a member, as I say, a senior member of the Committee on
International Relations; I am on the upper rung there. When you see
hearings, I am on the very top level of those hearings now because I
have been a Member of Congress now for 14 years. My job in that
committee is to oversee American foreign policy. Making a request to
see documents of the State Department to determine what American
foreign policy is is not only justified, it is something that should be
expected of Members of Congress. Of course we should see the documents
and find out what the policy is and talk with the administration and
make sure that we are doing our oversight responsibility.
For 2\1/2\ years, the Clinton State Department refused to provide me
the documents. It is called stonewalling.
{time} 1515
The Assistant Secretary of State, Rick Inderfurth, repeatedly gave me
documents that were irrelevant to the request that I made so he could
claim that he gave me documents. Some documents included newspaper
clippings, which is an insult, a Member of Congress asking for internal
documents and getting newspaper clippings.
Why was the State Department stonewalling my request? Is it illogical
for someone reading the Record or for me or my colleagues to believe
that if I was stonewalled in a request for documents from the State
Department and that I have a legitimate right to oversee that activity,
that the State Department was trying to hide something from me and thus
hide something from the American people? Is that irrational? No, I
think that flows directly from that action.
During the latter part of the Clinton years, even though Secretary
Albright agreed to provide me the documents necessary to determine
America's foreign policy towards the Taliban, I was repeatedly thwarted
from getting those documents, and I have to believe that Secretary
Albright herself knew that I was being thwarted because she had been
asked that in congressional hearings on the record in front of the
whole world under oath.
Thus, the Clinton administration when it came to the Taliban made a
joke out of Congress's right to oversee American foreign policy. Well,
guess who the joke is on? The joke is on the American people, but
nobody is laughing after September 11.
The Clinton administration, I repeat, was involved in policies that
actually supported the Taliban. This at a time when we knew their
nature. This at a time when we knew that they had terrorists there, bin
Laden, who had already killed Americans; this when we knew they were
some of the most horrendous human rights violators on the planet.
An example of ways the Clinton administration helped support the
Taliban, in 1996, for example, the Taliban had overstretched their
forces. This is at the beginning of their rule. Thousands of their best
fighters were captured in northern Afghanistan. I was watching this
very closely. The Taliban regime was vulnerable as never before and
never since. It was a tremendous opportunity, and by then we knew that
the Taliban were going to be the monstrous regime they proved to be.
The Northern Alliance, which existed then, had defeated the Taliban
in a way that made the Taliban incredibly vulnerable. A knockout blow
could have been unleashed easily by the Northern Alliance and the
Taliban could have been kicked out.
At the time I was in personal contact with the leaders of the
Northern Alliance, and I recommended to them a quick attack and
bringing back the old King Zahir Shah until the democratic process
could be established; and, thus, we could turn around the whole
situation in a very quick movement. Who saved the day? Why did the
Northern Alliance not take advantage of this opportunity? I can tell
Members who saved the day. President Clinton saved the day. Probably
personally he made the decision. Again, I beg Members of Congress,
please do not dismiss what I say. Any time someone says anything bad
about Bill Clinton, it is suggested to us that we are being partisan.
Please, that is not the case. We are talking about policies that were
in place. We are not talking about individuals. His actions and
policies saved the day, and those decisions were made and
responsibility should be placed.
What happened was at this moment when the Taliban could have been
eliminated, President Clinton dispatched Assistant Secretary Rick
Inderfurth and Bill Richardson, who was then our United Nations
ambassador, to go personally to northern Afghanistan and convince the
anti-Taliban forces not to go on the offensive, but instead to accept
an immediate cease-fire and an arms embargo.
Mr. Speaker, these people in northern Afghanistan were pretty
impressed by the United Nations ambassador and the President's personal
representative flying into northern Afghanistan. They wowed the
Northern Alliance, and the advice of the gentleman from California (Mr.
Rohrabacher), the State Department did everything they could to
convince them to ignore what the gentleman from California was saying.
This was like having a time when Adolf Hitler could have been
eliminated, but we were convincing the forces in Germany to sit down
and talk with old Adolf. Instead, they decided to accept a cease-fire
and an arms embargo. The minute there was a cease-fire, the Saudis and
the Pakistanis began a massive arms resupply of the Taliban.
So the Clinton administration instituted an arms embargo against the
Taliban's opponents, at the same time that we knew, our CIA clearly
knew what was going on, that there was a massive arms resupply of the
Taliban. Within a very short period of time after the Northern Alliance
was crippled by an arms embargo and the Taliban was smothered in new
weapons and supplies, the Northern Alliance was driven almost
completely out of the country. Only 10 percent was left after the
Taliban offensive.
For years I begged the Clinton administration to support those who
were resisting the Taliban regime. Not only did they not support those
who resisted the Taliban, but they actually undermined their efforts. I
said, what about King Zahir Shah? And again, Zahir Shah was not
acceptable. Too old. There was every reason in the world why we could
not do anything to oppose the Taliban in terms of actual actions
instead of just words, confetti words that America's President was just
throwing out.
Bin Laden was even able to kill Americans and kill military personnel
while in Afghanistan, and we still did not take the actions necessary
to try to overthrow the Taliban. We shot off a couple of cruise
missiles. We destroyed a few mud huts. All of the while bin Laden, who
has killed American military personnel already, was given a safe haven
to set up a terrorist network throughout the world. During that time
period, some of bin Laden's network tried to assassinate the Pope in
the Philippines. Throughout Southeast Asia, terrorist groups were
forming, all with the support of bin Laden having been given safe haven
in Afghanistan.
I believe that the United States did this and that the Clinton
administration was involved in this because they had made some kind of
deal or had some kind of understanding with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
And Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, they have their own reasons and their
own motives and their own value system; but let us take a look.
Pakistan is not a democratic country today. Musharraf, the guy who is
in charge there, is a general who overthrew a democratically elected
government. If he wants to bring peace to that country, I hope that he
provides the reform and heads back toward a democratic regime. I
suggested when he took power that he have a plebiscite to give himself
the legal authority to conduct that reform. He decided not to do that.
The Saudis, of course, are a medieval dictatorship, a family that
controls their country, these people who basically have some of the
same anti-Western feelings that bin Laden has. No, the
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Saudis do not have our same values. They have been allies to the United
States, and I give them credit. We should not forget that during the
Cold War, the Saudis were allies, as were the Pakistanis; and for that
we should be grateful. But we cannot let our gratitude for Saudi
support during the Cold War, and Pakistani support during the Cold War,
to bind us into policies that will undermine our well-being in a
totally different world that is emerging since the post-Cold War.
Bin Laden, of course, was a Saudi, and I say ``was'' because we still
do not know where he is. Let us hope that bin Laden has moved on to his
just rewards, and that would be burning in hell right about now. He was
preaching that the killing of innocent people, of thousands of unarmed
people was in some way consistent with his faith. There are Muslims all
over the world that would call him to task for such an obscene
statement. And I am sure that he is finding now that he is not
surrounded by all these dark-eyed virgins that he was promising these
people who committed these atrocities against us. He is finding that he
and the rest of his gang are heading in a different direction than
that.
I warned again and again, yet the Clinton administration did nothing;
and it did come back to hurt us. I am on the record on at least 14
different occasions suggesting that unless we changed our policy
against Afghanistan, it would have serious repercussions for the United
States of America.
Bad policy is at fault. Something else is at fault for what we
suffered, and we need to face that as well. The bad policy I hope has
changed. Although since our offensive in Afghanistan, let me note that
some of the same people in the State Department and elsewhere, even
after the attack on September 11, were hesitant to suggest that the
Taliban be eliminated from power. In fact, some were suggesting that
our game plan should be a coalition government between the Taliban and
the Northern Alliance, and all the Taliban had to do was give up bin
Laden. That is like asking Rudolph Hess and some of the rest of the
Nazi crowd to give up Hitler, and they can stay in power. Well, thank
goodness we have a President of the United States that was smart enough
and courageous enough to ignore that kind of advice and told the
Taliban that they are part and parcel of this, and made a goal of
eliminating the Taliban regime from power.
Our forces did this job in such a professional way. We worked with
those people in the Northern Alliance. Remember when we were told that
the Northern Alliance would take months and months and it would be such
a quagmire. The Northern Alliance have proven to be fighters able to
defeat the Taliban.
The Northern Alliance has won, and we have to make sure now that we
do not walk away again. We have to make sure that we do not leave the
Afghan people to sleep in the rubble; that we stick with those people
who are anti-Taliban who worked with us to eliminate bin Laden and the
Taliban. Let us help them rebuild a democratic, strong, prosperous
Afghanistan.
Already there is thought that the King of Afghanistan should be
coming back to Afghanistan. This after 12 years. Let me say, 12 years
ago I was told he is too old. The State Department would tell me he has
no support. He is too old. The King of Afghanistan is the only one who
has the loyalty of the hearts of the people of Afghanistan. They love
that man because he is a father figure who was King at a time period
when there was no killing.
{time} 1530
There was no chaos. People lived at peace with their families. They
remember that. The sooner the King gets back to Afghanistan, the
better.
I was able to go to the conference in Bonn after we had basically won
on the ground in Afghanistan in which the Afghan leaders got together
and chose an interim leader, Prime Minister Karzai, who is there now. I
was there to talk to them about the King and about Mr. Karzai and
talked to the various factions in Bonn, and it was my honor to have
been there, and I hope I made a small contribution to laying down a
plan that would permit Afghanistan to have some stability and
prosperity and peace in the future.
We do that by what was the original plan, and this is ironic. The
King has agreed to come back and open a Loya Jirga, which is a meeting
of the elders of his country. That meeting will help establish the
rules for a constitution which, over a transition period, will become a
democratic government for the people of Afghanistan. Finally. But we
cannot walk away.
They had a meeting in Tokyo a few days ago for donor countries. The
United States has committed, I think, about $350 million or so. I will
have to say I do not think that is legitimate. I will have to say that
I think the United States Government over a period of time should be
kicking in much more than $300 million to help the people of
Afghanistan.
To put that in perspective, we have been able to spend hundreds of
billions of dollars less every year on our military for all these years
since the end of the Cold War because the Afghans helped us end the
Cold War. For pete's sake, let us help the Afghans build their country.
They have only provided $27 million for demining in that country, $27
million. They think there are 8 million land mines. Three hundred
children every month end up becoming maimed by land mines in
Afghanistan that have been planted there. Think of the drain that would
be on our society, much less their society.
Let us make sure we ensure the peace and do the right thing, and the
right thing is making sure we do not walk away; that we bring the King
back; and we make sure there is an inclusive government, not like the
Taliban. They had their exclusive clique who had their own vision of
God, which they superimposed on everybody else. Let us instead, let us
instead, support an inclusive government, and that is what Zahir Shah
would do.
Unfortunately, now there are several people in Afghanistan, Mr.
Khalili and some others, Ismail Khan and some others, who worked
against the Taliban, who feel they may be being left out. We should not
let any government leave anyone out, and our own United States
Government should express its appreciation to those on the other side,
whom Mr. Khalili and Ismail Khan and others are associated with, and
others like that who fought against the Taliban, and everybody should
be included.
By the way, the Iranians, the Iranians are promising $560 million
worth of support, 50 percent more support for Afghanistan than the
United States of America. That is not right. We have benefited by the
end of the Cold War. We should make sure we repay the Afghans amply,
and that is what is right, and that will be good for us as well.
Let us remember as we move forward, now that the resistance of the
Taliban is gone down to just a few areas, there are a few hot spots
left there, but there is still a threat to democratic government in
Afghanistan. We must play a positive role, both in the economy and in
establishing democratic government. Mullah Omar, the head of the
Taliban, is still there somewhere with a thousand or so fighters in
Afghanistan. We have to make sure Mr. Karzai's interim regime is
successful in establishing the foundation that will sweep away the
Mullah Omars and bin Ladens forever, because the people of Afghanistan
are not fanatics. They are not fanatics.
The people who flew the airplanes into our buildings on September 11
were not Afghans. They were, by and large, Saudis. The people of
Afghanistan are devout in their faith, but they are not fanatic about
their faith, and Muslims throughout the world resent bin Laden and his
murderers for trying to talk for their religion.
President Bush has been magnificent in his outreach to the Muslim
countries of the world, letting them know that we will not succumb to
the temptation that bin Laden would like us to succumb to, which is
making an enemy out of all Muslims in the world. In fact, we are not
only not making enemies out of the Muslims from Afghanistan, we in fact
are reaching out to them, and need to do so with a heavier financial
commitment to help them rebuild their country.
Now, as we proceed, as I say, let us note that in the war against
terrorism there will be steps one, two and three. Number one was in
Afghanistan, and it is coming to a close, although it is not at a close
right now. Step two may be in Southeast Asia. I just returned from
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Malaysia where they have found bin Laden's network. In Singapore, they
just arrested 13 people who were part of bin Laden's network who were
planning to blow up a bus that carried American people from our embassy
every day. So there would have been 60 or 100 Americans who would have
been murdered there by bin Laden's terrorist network in Singapore.
In the Philippines we have already some Special Forces on the ground,
after 10 years of ignoring, by the way, during the Clinton
Administration. Again, I would say we have got to help the Philippines.
I realized that. I went to the Philippines time and again to try to get
them together. They were a target of the Communist Chinese and they
were a target of bin Laden's network.
Today we have a chance to save the Philippines, but it will be close.
We need to work with the Philippines. We have some Special Forces teams
on the ground, and we need to make that commitment. I think President
Bush has made that commitment. Whether or not that is going to be the
next front in the war against terrorism or whether it will be to finish
the job that we did not do against Saddam Hussein, this will be a war
on terrorism, and it will be a war that is conducted sequentially, and
it will be a war that we will be proud of because we will be standing
for freedom and democracy and peace.
I salute the members of our Armed Forces who have conducted such a
gallant fight, who are leading us on to victory and to create a better
world, and to have a better world we must have the courage to do what
is right and stand for the principles our country believes in.
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